Serpent in the womb
*** Magic, William reminded himself, is a lot more exciting than dolls. "Pick a card, Donna. Any card." Donna hugged Betsy in her arms and kept her distance. William was always trying to torment her, so this was probably some trick to scare her again. She scratched the button of Betsy's eye, which had been loose since she fetched her from a gutter in the Canals, which was also William's fault. Donna didn't like fortune tellers. They kept strange pets, like snakes or scorpions, and smelled disturbingly like Mr. Pestle's store. "Don't wanna," she muttered. "That's not your cards anyway." "You don't know that. I coulda bought 'em." "Did not! I know you. You stole those." Donna never liked being alone with the boy, especially when he had ideas. "Jus' hurry up an pick. Or I'm gonna pick for you." Grinning, William waved his hand over the arrangement of cards, gesturing across the panoply of potential consequences. Your first love will break your heart. Keep away from strangers. You will die in a week. Red is your lucky color. "Fine!" Donna slapped his hand away and pressed her palm against a single card. "Fine, this one." William turned his head to one side, smile similarly lopsided. As brothers went, William was hardly nice, let alone comforting. Donna didn't hate him--just his imagination. Fortunately, she had Betsy with her now, despite William's history of seizing her hostage. "You sure? This card? That one there?" He drummed his fingertips on the patterned surface, eyebrows raised. "I guess so." William flipped the card over by a corner. The two children leaned closer until their heads touched, squinting. Candlelight curled along the card's surface: A winged woman, white as snow. Her eyes were covered and her face was solemn. She held a sword in her left hand. "She's pretty. What's it mean, Will?" He continued staring at it. "It's an angel. Obviously it means Betsy's gonna die, or go blind. Or both," William answered without looking up. Donna paled and looked like she wanted to cry. "Shut up!" Donna squeaked, shrinking back with her rag doll nestled in her arms while William giggled, piling the cards together and reaching for a fresh handful. He concluded that, while he liked the pictures, his audience made it all worthwhile. "Betsy's gonna marry the King." A black figure loomed on the card, scythe in hand. "And then they're gonna esketute her fer p'litical reasons!" In fact, William was a very lucky augur, which is to say he was a good one. He drew the right cards at the right time, but was neither sensitive nor paranoid enough to notice another, simultaneous sign. High above their cabin, against the crest of the night sky, a flock of birds was gyrating around a thin axis, wings bony and white. *** Plague came to Stormwind Harbor inside small brown boxes. They were unmarked, delivered on a nondescript boat that no one recognized, by carriers no one had seen, where they sat beneath the fog of a morning like any other, among a hundred similar crates, exhaling contagion. Disease is inherently chaotic, and treatment orderly. A man might contract an illness by happenstance, and it might by chance spread in a handshake or an embrace. They might then visit an a physician or a priest. Some might recover today, some tomorrow. Some would never recover at all. As an apothecary brews anti-venom from the fang of a snake, so every disease ought to be curable by its antithesis. All chaos should contain within it a potential for order. This Plague was different. It was born of order and precision. It had a plan. In fact, it was all very timely. Its first accomplice was the Overseer of a gang of early morning longshoremen, who was suffering from a hangover and dreading the paperwork suggested by unlabeled boxes. Instead, he made the practical choice and snapped open the top of the crate. Finding nothing more than poor quality millet flour, he sent it off to the local charity. After all, he was a man with a conscience. At dawn, the boxes arrived at the stairs of The Sanctuary, a small charity and home for the destitute, nestled into a small corner of the Old Town District. Six minutes later, Frederick, a young squire, carried the boxes into the kitchen and dropped them beside great brick ovens with just enough force to snap off a few splinters of wood, from which a few particles spilled out and drew by their scent two small, white mice formerly hiding in a dusty pantry. Frederick then paused to catch his breath, under which he muttered a profanity against soup kitchen duty, and also began to wonder when he had grown so out of shape. Three hours later, the Sanctuary had fed three dozen of Stormwind's hungry a hunk of black bread and a bowl of faintly metallic millet porridge to wash it down. Four hours later, the shelter closed for the day. Cooks were complaining of faintness, fever and distorted vision. When one of the older cooks stepped outside for daylight and fresh air, she was seized by a sudden chill. She took three steps and collapsed near a street corner. The small crowd that formed around her found blisters blossoming on searing, wet skin. When night had fallen, the air of Old Town was thick with silence. A certain corruption had begun to take root, first in the cobblestones, then spreading along walls, through windowpanes, underneath doors. It had no scent and no color, no discernible form, but stole a little wherever its fingers reached. Here and there, fresh paint cracked and crumbled. Windows fogged and yellowed. Trees shed brittle leaves. Stormwind City was its own species of organism. By day, it was alive, breathing the air and light of the sky; Life pulsed in its system of streets and canals like blood in veins. By night, it too slept, dreaming of dark alleys, open windows, card games. Tonight, a limb rotted away. *** The first impression most people formed of Finneas Connor was a man of spotless cleanliness. He wore, without variation, a white doublet with a straight row of ivory buttons, white doeskin gloves, clean white pants and a slender silver necklace. He kept his scarlet hair combed back, parted in calculated symmetry. Garments fastidiously cleaned and scented, he seemed the type to go squeamish at a stain. Actually, that wasn't true at all. Finneas had a curious affection for dirt. After all, Finneas was an apothecary, and filth was vital to the business. Presently, he was walking alone on a progressively deteriorating cobblestone road leading into Old Town Gate. A single thread of fabric fell onto his shoulder, and then another. He stopped and looked up, staring at a formerly vibrant Alliance Banner suspended in the stillness of the air. Its edges were threadbare, falling apart one seam at a time. A brown rot was climbing up its length, gnawing away at the mane of a lion. He pursed his lips together and blew air. The banner shivered in the breeze. Bits of thread fluttered away into dust. Finneas smiled. Beautiful, ''he thought, a little hop in his step as he walked down an unlit corner. A dog had collapsed in a heap near a gutter. Skin stuck to its ribs. ''Like a billion little termites. He saw no guards patrolling the streets. He heard no groaning of beggars, or shouts from taverns. It had happened in a single night. Or rather, it was happening. Embalmment was a process. They would notice in the morning, and with a little help from him, perhaps sooner. When he arrived at The Sanctuary in a small corner on the east end, some time later, it seemed to him that the building had been abandoned for years. Millions of billions. Just eating away. He stepped inside. Moonlight filtered through dirty windows, scintillating off motes of dust, revealing suggestions of figures in the darkness. Frederick was curled up near a rusted stove, his hand laid flat in a bar of moonlight, bones embossed beneath a skin that seemed almost, much to Finneas's sudden delight, leprous. Two white mice staggered out of a cupboard, wrestling into one another on the ground dusted with flour. One of them sank its teeth into the other. There was a shriek, a squirming, and then nothing. Just eating away. From the root to the brain. Of everything. Finneas was pleased. The scent was strongest here, where it all began. He was one of two people he knew that could diagnose Plague by scent. The other had been walking beside him since he left his clinic thirty minutes ago. 'Walking' is, perhaps, an inaccurate description. Corporeal beings walked; They had feet to carry them across the ground. Spirits were anywhere they wanted to be. She began speaking to him from the coals of a stove. Smoke twisted in the air without a flame, taking the shape of a woman. "Someone has been following you, Finneas Connor," the smoke whispered. "For how long?" He frowned at her. "Thirty minutes." Ether fumed from the Val'kyr's back, vaguely in the shape of wings. She wrapped them around herself like a cloak. Finneas wrinkled his nose. "You might have told me earlier, Annhylde. I don't want to have to kill someone." He looked over his shoulder. A thread of moonlight framed the doorway. "How long do I have?" "Twelve seconds. Consider this a test, Finneas Connor." Smoke curled into the air and vanished. Footsteps clicked on the cobblestone outside. His visitor was strolling. Finneas peeled away his left glove and began counting. Twelve. ''A dead mouse writhed at his heel. ''Eleven. Fingernails tore at the ground. Ten. The corpse churned and heaved. A loud crack followed. Little things were snapping into place. Nine. Unseen hands toyed with a ghastly little doll. Eight. Frederick opened his eyes. Finneas flexed his slender fingers. They had always said he was gifted. *** "How long does she have?" They had brought her in from Old Town. She was the twelfth one today. Helena knew there would be more. The Office of the Argent Healer was small, even after she had thrown out the desk and bookshelves to make room for more blankets. Helena sat beside the semi-conscious woman, cradling her burning cheek and jaw with her gloved fingertips. "Long enough. I can try to keep her condition from worsening." Helena closed her eyes and whispered a prayer in an angelic tongue. The woman stirred, turning her head to one side and falling to sleep. She pressed a washcloth to the woman's pallid skin, soaking the dark blood seeping from blisters constellated on her emaciating face. "Where did you find her?" Helena frowned. The wounds were sealing, some color struggling to surface along her cheeks and lips. And yet, Helena sensed, something dark had taken root. Something erratic, writing itself into this woman's heartbeat. Diseases don't communicate with their hosts. "I didn't. Some beggars found her in a heap next to the Sanctuary, in Old Town." The guard sat on his knees beside her, scratching his fingers through a mat of brown hair. Helena stopped and stared at him. A bead of sweat rolled from her creased brow. "Helena?" he asked, "Do you know what's happened to her?" "No." She laid the woman's head on a bundled towel. "Go wash yourself and change out of your clothes." Valentine was a nice boy. He meant well, and she didn't want to see him laying in this rank of sunken bodies, burning in fever dreams from which there would be no awakening. Ever. She remembered the scant reports from Lordaeron, years ago, at the cusp of the Plague. Known symptoms: Exhaustion, severe fever, boils, delirium, madness, magnified aggression. A disease without an antithesis, it ate away at everything. Helena dipped her fingers in a bowl of water. Dark blood washed from her hands in clouded tongues. She imagined Stormwind like that--like Lordaeron--festering in the belly of the Plague, neither alive nor dead. Helena's hands were shaking. Light, I need some air. She scrubbed off her hands with a towel and stepped outside. In the corner, a sleeping man stopped breathing. Several minutes later, his body began to writhe. *** William's favorite card was the Fool. He liked the picture: A young man with wild hair staring skyward, one foot precariously dangling over the edge of a bottomless cliff. He wore a sequined waistcoat, not unlike the fashion commonly paraded by the Park District nobles. Moreover, William loved the expressions on people's faces whenever this fortune teller drew the Fool and placed it on the table in a very self-explanatory, non-chalant sort of way. He had been watching for hours now. That expression was generally anything from politely masked disappointment to outright disbelief. In this case, the client was a nobleman out for an evening drink with a few friends, and the soothsayer--who William was really ''starting to like--was a slender young woman wearing a great dark cloak, with a few strands of blonde hair peeking out from her cowl. They were seated at a table under a tall oak in which William was hiding, little feet swinging off the side of a branch. "Am I going to be rich?" The client grinned at her. She turned a card over. Lightning cleaving a tower in half. "Not for long," answered the soothsayer. She had a delicate voice. One of the nobles began snickering. "Er--oh. What makes you say that?" He frowned, a little flustered. William was smiling. The girl spread out her exquisite fingers and turned over another card. It was William's favorite. "Lack of talent," she said. The snickering continued. One of his friends slapped the client's back. He was getting annoyed. "Lack of talent, you say? So tell me, how ''long do I have, exactly?" She turned a third card over. A black figure without a face sweeping a bony scythe. "About two days," said the soothsayer. *** "I'm sorry, Val." Helena leaned against the railings of the balcony overlooking the Cathedral district. Evening was cool against her skin. "You did a good thing, bringing her to me. But you were being clumsy, and risking your own health." He was wearing fresh clothes and brought her a glass of water. She smiled vaguely. "You look so tired, 'Lena. Take a break?" "I am tired. I can't take ''a break." She drank the water in a hurry, soothing a parched throat, and wiped her lips. "At least, not until I run out of space. Then we will need to move everyone to the Cathedral." "You're saying there's going to be more?" "Probably. I'll be honest," she sighed, rolling the empty glass in her hand. "I don't think they'll last. Oh don't look at me like that, Valentine. I'm doing everything I can!" His gaze softened. He wanted to say something--''you're working too hard, Helena. Let me call the other priests. Have faith, you of all people. I'm sure everything will work out in the end. Finally, he spoke. "I think I should give you some space." Helena nodded slowly. Space would be best. She leaned close to kiss his cheek, but stopped. "I'm sorry I'm--I'm not clean right now. In fact I shouldn't be here with you." She left the glass on the balcony. *** Three silver lions and a copper piece. That was about all a good, honest soothsayer could hope to earn in a night's work. Clients didn't pay in gold lions for: Honestly, your opportunity for romantic happiness vanished when you decided to go into the cheese trade like your father. You really ought to have run away with that little flower seller to Theramore. ''Iris left the coins on the little wooden table and collected her cards. "I know you're up there", she said, without looking up or raising her voice. "These are for you." Smoothing out the creases on her dark robes, she left the small stall and the oak tree looming over it. William blushed. He was certain no one had seen him up in that tree. Did the cards tell her that? She was even better than he had imagined. He remained on the limb until her robed figure sauntered out of sight, following a winding path of moonlit cobblestone. Then, he scampered down the tree and palmed the coins on the table, stuffing them into his pocket. Iris took the scenic route. Walking the streets of a human city again, after so many years, provoked a little sense of nostalgia within her. She allowed herself some indulgence, eyes touring skyward as she strolled. The spires of the Cathedral towered in the distance, slender marble needles that crowned the night sky. Fireflies swirled around paper lanterns hanging from vine-covered lamp-posts, casting flickering shadows across perfectly trimmed glass. She could hear the laughter of the taverns. Stormwind was beautiful in its own human way. The architecture had a certain cosmopolitan charm to it but, in her very humble opinion, it was ruined by the constant and troublesome presence of a population, like a very fine boudoir infested with roaches. Well, perhaps she was being a bit unfair. It wasn't ''that bad, or she wouldn't be here. Lady Sylvanas was right. If the Plague erupted here, it would spiral into chaos, engulfing half the continent in endless blight--a second Plaguelands, climbing its way to Quel'Danas and the Undercity. Crush the serpent's egg before it hatches. Lady Sylvanas was a practical woman. Her orders were likewise pragmatic. Within the womb of Stormwind, a serpent slept in embryonic torpor. Sylvanas's apothecaries watched plagues as she the stars: With an augur's punctilious obsession, they had pinpointed the moment and means of conception. Grain, after all, was proven by precedent a reliable carrier of epidemic strains. If it happened in Lordaeron, it could--no, would, happen in Stormwind. Plague was simply a matter of gestation. In short, Iris was Sylvanas's means of guaranteeing a miscarriage of the serpent's egg. Practical woman. Iris stopped abruptly, hands lowered before of her waist. She spoke softly to no one. "Thanmon. Have you found him?" Below her feet, Iris's shadow began to ripple like a puddle in the rain. Something black and formless crawled out of the darkness and into corporeality like a man exiting a bath, shadows streaming from his vaguely anthropomorphic physique. Corpus Exumbral ''or, in layman's terms, a Voidwalker. It spoke to her in rumbling Demonic. ''One finds Connor Finneas walking southeast from the Cathedral. '' "Connor? The apothecary? Are you certain?" Iris ran her nails down her cheek in thought. She knew Finneas, or knew of him, in her fortnight's time in Stormwind--elves drew little attention here, at least compared to a rotting Forsaken. Infiltration felt like cheating. Finneas was a respectable apothecary with a respectable pharmacy erected a pious proximity to the Cathedral. He was also a florist, fond of red poppies. Next to Archbishop Benedictus himself (whom she never really liked), Finneas Connor ranked quietly among the unacknowledged group of least likely suspects. Which, naturally, made him the most likely. ''Completely certain. One does not make mistakes. "Well, what did he look like?" Very clean. Very white. Nothing like most human cultists. No animal skulls on the head. One is surprised. ''Linguistically, Demonic was nearly devoid of tonal inflections. Years of practice, however, had tuned her hearing to detect the niceties of demonic sarcasm. "How can you be sure it was him? Do you have proof for me?" ''He walks in the company of a Val'kyr. That wasn't sarcasm. Her body started. She snapped her neck to gaze at him. "You are absolutely certain?" One has already answered that inquiry. Iris felt a lump had settled in her throat. She was, as Sylvanas had once said of her, a talented tenebrist and demonologist. But Val'kyr were a unique problem. Handmaidens to a power far greater, she knew, than Lady Sylvanas. The progenitor of the Plague of Undeath. Something cold grew in her abdomen. She cursed herself to have waited so long to strike. "So this 'egg' has a Val'kyr midwife." She pulled her cloak over a shoulder. "We've kept Sylvanas waiting too long, I think. A fortnight too long." Her fingers clenched into a tight fist. A spark of emerald fire coiled around her knuckles, then vanished. Two weeks without practice had not rusted the edge from her weapon. Good. She took her leave of the Park in hurried steps. Thanmon followed in her shadow. Very professional of you. One is impressed by your devotion to duty. Did you enjoy your card game, Sunfall Iris? Iris smiled as she walked. Moonlight vanished beneath the murk of the waterways. Passing beneath a short archway, a roach skittered by her heel. She crushed it without a thought, leaving a scorched black mark against the ground. "Immensely." *** "Don't hurt Betsy! Give her back!" Donna chased William across the canal district, and nearly stumbled over a loose stone. She was going to cry again. "Baby wants her dolly! Nyah nyah!" William grinned over his shoulder, darting down the walkway, rag doll swinging in his hand. *** Iris covered her mouth, staring with morbid fascination at her own spectacular defeat. Had it happened early? Or was she too late? Cobblestone crumbled beneath her heel. Old Town had the rusted look of a leprous body. Fragments of brick and shingle sloughed off their foundations and burst to dusty clouds as they fell to the earth, rippling through the stillness. A shadow of a dog crept across the flank of a building. Its fractured bricks spilled forth fistfuls of fungal matter. It was happening everywhere: spores bursting, seeping into cracks and crevices, fermenting into new strains. She considered, briefly, leaving Stormwind to rot. Sylvanas's apothecaries had been wrong. The serpent was hatching early, and military mobilization was the only option. No. Finneas was a fool to step into a contaminated area without an antidote. And she was a fool for doing the same. If he carried a serum on his person, the solution was obvious: Kill him, deliver the serum to Lady Sylvanas and hope that in her wisdom she saw fit to share a dose with her loyal servant. Otherwise: Die trying, preferable to the primordial horrors awaiting Iris should she fail Sylvanas. She placed one foot before the other and marched. Stone crumbled beneath her heel. In its shadow, scarlet mold bloomed. "It's like a necropolis." Almost. One recalls a necropolis requiring a population of undead. Otherwise, it is merely a cemetery. "That comes later, doesn't it?" In a few hours, yes. "Then let's hurry." She turned a corner, traveling down a blackened path. Erratic footsteps began to materialize here, visible to eyes trained in the detection of spiritual presences. Ghosts and spirits, she recalled, left little traces of ectoplasm of their passing. Finneas's Val'kyr companion, however, left footsteps burning with ethereal fire. Ghostly puddles of flame drifted up the stone steps of a dilapidated charity. Mold had grown over engraved lettering reading: The Sanctuary. "Hide yourself in my sleeve." Are you certain, Sunfall Iris? "One has already answered that inquiry." *** Finneas brought his fingers together. Seven. ''At his side, a body crawled in the darkness. ''Six. ''Would his visitor really hurt a boy? ''Five. The remains of a squire hunched down, perverse imitation of predatory instincts inscribed in his posture. Four. Finneas laid his left hand on the squire's lifeless head and smiled. A puppet without strings. Truly, the sign of a master puppeteer. Three. And now, for my favorite trick: A disappearing act. Two. Now watch my hands. Are you watching, Annhylde? One. *** Iris kicked open the Sanctuary door. She stepped inside and closed it behind her, lowering her hood, gold hair shaking free behind tall elven ears. Finneas smiled at her in the darkness as she dusted off her robes. "Right then. Finneas Connor?" Her enchanted eyes shortly adjusted to the absolute dark, flooding her vision with detail: Dilapidated kitchen, dead mice, flour scattered about, dark stains pouring down the walls, a slender branch of a man in white and-- Finneas smiled like a wolf. A doll of a body crouched beside him, limbs stiff. Iris's eyes widened. She thrust out her palm, hissing through her teeth, the lines of her hand pulsing with ghostly light. "Do you like it?" His hand patted Frederick's mortified head. Hair fell into his palm. "You disgust me." She narrowed her eyes. "His spirit has left him. Poor thing. But I've put the body to good use. Waste not. Want not." His eyes met hers, smiling. "Come to kill me, little elf?" "Worse." Green fire danced at her fingertips. "Disappear, Finneas Connor." Her eyes flashed. Finneas snapped his fingers. Arcanists of all disciplines were, essentially, conduits of imperceptible tides that churned in the spaces between reality, like lightning rods within endless stormclouds. In the last several hours, the Sanctuary was rapidly filling with small grains of invisible, necrotic energy as bodies rotted away and pestilent fungus expelled clouds of volatile spores, rushing into crowded spaces, so delicately combustible that the slightest spark of arcane fire would discharge a spectacular eruption. Her spell exploded through the Sanctuary. Windows smashed open beneath the pressure of sudden backdraft and spit forth great streams of gangrenous flame. Iris fell in a rain of broken glass. Her body rolled down the slope of a road and stopped against a gutter. The blood on her robes steamed in a boiling hiss upon falling against the corrupted ground. Finneas brushed dust from his suit. Annhylde had underestimated him. Twelve seconds was more than enough to prepare an arcane ward. Smoldering embers slid down the surface of the iridescent aegis. He noticed its surface was cracked, but presently dismissed the glittering shield, concluding that he had simply underestimated her by a hair. He did not, however, notice a formless shadow reaching from the dark. Finneas leaned out of a charred window, admiring his handiwork. Beautiful. He smiled. *** Valentine held Donna in his arms. She clung her fingers into his neck, sobbing until she was out of breath. The girl was lucky to be alive. Somewhere on the Canal walkways, William left her behind. She followed the wrong feet in a crowd, and when Donna looked up, she was alone. She was sitting in a tattered street when they found her, screaming in the darkness for her mother. Valentine frowned. He clutched a hand along the diminutive slope of the child's quivering shoulders. Her skin was warm--he hoped it wasn't fever. "I'm taking the children somewhere safe. No one goes in or out of here, under any circumstances." Valentine addressed a band of seven colleagues barricaded before the crumbling buttress of the Old Town Gate. His voice was trembling, and he struggled to maintain a facade of confidence. William hugged Valentine's leg. He stared behind the row of men, into the acrid mist coiling behind them along the streets of Old Town. "What do you mean 'no one goes out'?" One of them snapped back. His sword hand had been shaking. Valentine frowned. "What do you mean no one goes out? We need to help these people--call physicians, call more guards, get the priests--this whole place is sick, Val and--" "Yes I know it's sick. That's the point!" His patience was near snapping. Valentine exhaled sharply through his nostrils. "If word gets out, the panic will do far more damage. We need to be responsible, calm, handle this like professionals." His eyes scanned the row of soldiers who had grown stiff with paranoia. "You." Valentine beckoned the youngest soldier with a quick tilt of his neck. He was a pale waif of a boy in a fresh blue tabard. "Bring her with you." He motioned to the blood-elf laid beside the great stone arch of the gate. Gold hair stuck to the side of her face, matted in cooling blood against scorched skin. A crude bandage torn from a burnt black cloak wrapped around her ribs. A flimsy boat carried them across the canals, toward the Guard House. The waifish boy had been exhaling prayers in the susurrations of the uneven breathing symptomatic of a constant sense of restrained panic. Occasionally he glanced down at Iris's body. William looked up at Donna, who had just fallen asleep on Valentine's shoulder, and pushed Betsy in her arms. She nestled her cheek against Betsy's blonde yarn hair, snoring through her mouth. Perhaps they were at fault. Perhaps the young guards, shaken by their trek into the malignant limb of Stormwind, had been watching for the wrong suspects. Conspicuous people. People they had never seen before. Shambling corpses. In that one narrow sense, they were doing their duty. They never noticed the roaches slip by their feet in the darkness, plague embedded within the pores of their infected carapace. They crawled into the streets without a sound. Some fell into the canals. Others climbed into windows, beneath doors. *** The Stormwind Cathedral was thick with the smell of corruption and incense. Helena had prayed it would not come to pass. Perhaps she might have contained it--gathered the ill and the weak in the Office of the Argent healer, lay them out on twill mats, administer the proper combinations of tinctures and herbs, whisper the correct prayers. Some might survive, others would not, but no lips but a historian's would utter that noxious word: plague. No. Pestilence was now churning in the veins of Stormwind. She was seated on a bench in the corner of the Cathedral, holding a cloth soaked in essences against her nose and mouth. They numbered in the dozens before her, arranged in efficient, narrow rows of withering bodies beneath the slopes of a single white sheets growing hotter by the hour with the rancid smell of infection, clinging to consciousness by a single hair. White-garbed priests walked the lanes between their heads and feet, pausing occasionally to administer salve, lance a boil or--when their eyes had grown hollow and their veins had grown black--let them sip from a bowl of honeyed milk. She was told it was especially sweet, and would kill without a moment's anguish. No pain, only sleep. Then their bodies were taken away and burned. Another clump of incense lit on the altar, another prayer whispered into the ribbon of quivering smoke. Helena sat and wondered why she felt this peculiarly equipoised. Perhaps it would come to her later, when she was alone. Solitude might unlatch the doors of her psyche. Emotions would then creep in like thieves, stealing things away. Then she would feel everything to her core. "Helena?" She lifted her head with a start. Valentine looked like hell, eyes heavy with exhaustion, hair loose, wet with sweat. Flecks of blood speckled a dirtied tabard. It was not an unfamiliar look. She was starting to resemble him. "Valentine!" She rose from her bench. Gloved hands lay at his breastplate; It was a reflexive gesture. She just wanted to remind her hands of the warmth of a healthy body. "Donna and Will. I left them in the Park earlier. Are they alright?" "Yes. I found them just in time. Donna ran into Old Town--" He watched her face blanch. "Relax. It's okay. They're safe." Then he lowered his voice, whispering, eyes flickering briefly. "There was a blood elven woman there. She was wounded, badly, but she's coming to. We have her locked, for now." Helena narrowed her eyes, removing her hands. "Do you think they might be behind--" "Possibly. I don't know." He exhaled, exasperated. "I don't know anything right now, Helena." She frowned, searching his face. After some silence, she looked over her shoulder, then back to him. Lowering her voice, she whispered, as if sharing a secret. There was a smile in her voice--fragile, but it was there. "Some of them are recovering. Very few. Three or four. We don't know if the sickness will relapse, but, perhaps there's hope." They shared in another silence. "Take me to see her, Val. I need some air, anyway." She smoothed her dress, peeling off her gloves, curling locks of dark hair behind her ears. Sometimes, one's situation is so breathtakingly divorced from the routine of one's existence that, like a lurid dream, the mind refuses to register the sensations of reality, expecting at any moment to snap awake to the smell of breakfast or the touch of a warm hand. Sometimes, terror feels like tranquility. *** The figure of Finneas Connor, apothecary, paced down the streets of Old Town, leaving behind him a smoldering building that shook beneath the impacts of sporadic bursts of sickly flame, a rotten foundation creaking amid fiery tongues. "Did I pass the test, Annhylde?" He muttered to himself. Presently, he noticed he was limping. Finneas stopped and looked down, eyeing a slender stream of scarlet soaking a pattern down his expensive white pants, where a tiny needle of plagued glass had lodged itself in his thigh. He recalled with sudden stiffness that unassuming little fracture in his otherwise perfectly conjured ward. Finneas felt faint. A burning pain racked his limbs and he fell to the ground. His fingers groped at his neck, searching out that precious silver amulet. He felt nothing, but for a quickening pulse beneath his fingers. "Annhylde?" Finneas panicked for the first time in his life. He clawed at his neck, padded his pockets in futility. Turning his head to the smoldering building, he struggled to stand but fell again to a knee with an audible crack and screeched. Where is it? Where? ''A frantic pulse fed the open wound, mind racing in a cacophony of questions interrupted by desperate calculations. How could I have--no. At this rate, I'll--no. Annhylde? Where did it go? It was that elven--Annhylde!'' "ANNHYLDE!" Finneas's scream frothed down his lips. Plague-spores blossomed on the scarlet of his fabric, crowding it, spreading into him, eating away into his veins. Like a billion little termites, just eating away. He howled her name into the air, writhing, answered by the putrid bellow of flame as it devoured the Sanctuary. The Val'kyr never answered him. And if she had heard his pitiful squealing, her interest in him had vanished. Somewhere above the smoldering ruins of the Sanctuary, trails of smoke formed vaguely in the shape of white wings. Somewhere high above Stormwind, a pack of white birds circled the crescent moon, their bodies made of bone. Ice churned inside their hollow bellies. Somewhere in Old Town, a little girl was screaming for her mother. Finneas died alone in a street. Before the mold took his eyes, he saw everything. It was beautiful. *** Donna slept on a makeshift cot near the wall of the Guard House lobby. It was cold, and they had wrapped her in blankets. Beads of sweat formed at her forehead. Nearby, a single jailer reclined in his seat, tipped back at a precarious angle, boots kicked up on a table cluttered with papers. His arms were crossed and he was snoring. William was incredibly bored. He regretted missing the explosion. He heard the guards talking about it. Apparently, they could see it all the way in the canals: a tall corridor of black smoke pumping out of the southwest. Currently, he was seated on a flimsy wooden chair in a mostly empty lobby, swinging his feet back and forth, eyeing a nondescript wooden box placed in a corner with surreptitious interest. They had taken the elf girl down into the cells when he arrived, which was also a shame. He always wanted to see the cells, because that was where the kept the Canal Beast: A monstrous crocolisk they kept chained in a giant, swampy iron cell, feeding him a burglar from time to time. Why would Valentine lie about something like that?. William kicked his feet. The jailer was sleeping soundly, owing to an amber bottle on his table, half empty. Slipping from the chair, he walked carefully, on his heels, to the box, and knelt before it. They had taken some objects from the elf earlier, packing them away for safe-keeping, which was a miscalculation. Nothing was "safe" or "kept" around William. His fingers dug beneath the lid of the box, creaking it open. His hand clawed about, producing various effects: A small parcel of parchment written in a strange language, a little velvet bag--its contents emptied on the ground with a metallic clatter, little glowing shards of emerald--and something much better. William produced a deck of cards wrapped in a black ribbon. He grinned. *** They had locked her in the center of the world. Iris had never seen this shade of black. Feeling trickled back into her body. First, she felt the shackles. An iron collar had been fastened around her throat. Its weight sank into her slender shoulders. Her arms had been drawn behind her back, and something heavy and cold clamped down against her wrists. She writhed and found that it hurt. Her fingers twisted in a rudimentary gesture. Little bursts of spellfire sputtered at her fingers and vanished. Antimagic, she thought. That's one of our inventions, you plagiarizing--'' She struggled to her feet, stumbling forward several inches and crashing shoulder-first into a stone wall. Iris screamed. She was locked somewhere dark and hot, pestilent fever steadily inching through her body. There was no perceptible ceiling, no visible dimensions to her stone prison but what she could measure by blind stumbling. When Iris opened her eyes, a realization sank into her. She no longer felt a sensation of eyes, but a void of burned tissue. "Thanmon?" She screamed again. "THANMON!" His silence was cruel, he realized. He had been beside her all along, umbral body body simmering in the dark. She had been punished enough, he decided as he spoke. ''One sympathizes with your condition. Iris lifted her head, turning about. "Thanmon...help me." He might have smiled. She heard something tiny and metallic touch the ground, several meters away, chiming like a spinning coin. "What is that?" One snatches it from his person. Connor Finneas dies looking for it. "An antidote? Give it to me! Hurry!" She shouted and kicked her feet, crawling toward the sound. One cannot. Your cell is warded against sorcery. One enters and is torn apart. "Then throw it in! Have someone give it to me--" Why? He wondered as he saw her scorched brow tense over burned eyes. She would never find it, let alone open the tincture with bound hands. One commends your dedication to your duty. Sylvanas will hear of your sacrifice. Thanmon vanished, leaving Iris alone in sightless void. She screamed for him. *** William sat cross legged on the ground. Donna didn't know what she was missing. He had arranged his cards on the dirty floor, stroking his chin importantly as he eyed his audience: A shaggy orange tabby, curled up before him, thumping its tail on the ground. "Pick a card. Any card." *** Helena found her in a pitiable state. That blood elf woman they captured. She had felt compelled to meet her. Perhaps, she had wondered on the quiet walk to the Stockades, she was reaching for an outlier in a hopelessly bleak pattern. Her practical side called it a hunch. Her spiritual side, an omen. Helena had grown intimately accustomed to reading signs as an augur might read the birds, or a soothsayer the cards. Naturally, she was distrustful of them. And so she was wary of Iris, curled on the floor of a cell, black veins crawling up her porcelain skin. Miraculously, she was alive and conscious, even as contagion coiled itself around her heart. Iris began muttering at her. Helena noticed the burn across her eyes. "Something...at your feet. Give it to me, please," Iris croaked. Iris had heard someone coming. Someone with soft, steady footsteps and a warm aura. It was a pleasing warmth, even for a feverish woman. Helena looked down. Beside her heel, a small silver necklace laid on the ground, attached to a pendant in the shape of an egg. "This?" Helena lifted it. She noticed a small latch and opened it. Inside were six glass pearls, some black and some white. "What is it? Is it yours?" Helena could barely stand the sight of it. Iris was crawling toward her on her belly. She lifted her bruised neck, extending a tongue from her open mouth as if dying of thirst. In a way, she was. Helena hesitated, staring at the little silver egg. She picked a small white pearl with her fingertip and dropped it into Iris's mouth. The elf bit down, glass breaking against her tongue. The blood was sweet in her mouth. She fell to her knees and Helena noticed she was suddenly perspiring, sweat pouring from her body. Color seeped back into her skin. Black veins receded. "Thank you. Light, thank you. Whoever you are." Iris gasped for air. She could feel it burning inside her, a cleansing fire that scorched away pestilence. The air smelled bright now. Helena stood aghast, speechless. Some of the burns had even disappeared. As she came to her senses, she closed the egg and slipped it into her dress. Her fingers pressed against her skin. She found that her blood was pumping in excitement. "Will you free me?" Iris smiled pitifully, glancing about in the wrong direction. She gasped as she heard footsteps grow softer and softer. Was she walking away? "Wait. Wait. I have information. Let us bargain." Helena wasn't listening. Her hands were trembling as she gripped the necklace. "Wait, please. My lady." Light's Hope Chapel was a week by boat. She would leave soon--no, she would leave now. Donna and William would be safe there. "I can help you. Wait! WAIT!" There, at the heart of the Argent Dawn, perhaps, if she did everything right, if the Light were on her side, she would make a cure. It echoed deep in her mind as she left Iris behind her, repeating one single word, chanting it like a prayer over the shouting elf, not to the Light but to Life itself: Cure. *** "Come on, love. We need to go." Helena's hands, she noticed, shivered softly as she drew her daughter into her arms. Donna stirred in her sleep, her head laying against Betsy like a pillow on Helena's shoulder. "Where we goin'?" William frowned, brushing his cards together with sweeps of his hands. He pulled the pile up into his arms, marching behind Helena. "Somewhere safe." She gave him a weary smile, combing her fingers through his hair. *** Iris had grown tired of screaming. She lay in a corner--some corner in this shapeless cell--cold stone pressing against the pain in her shoulders. The screaming had stopped some time ago. Instead, there was a scraping as Iris ground her wrist-irons against the rough hewn wall. Slowly, one grain of iron at a time, she would be free of this place. Desperation gave way to shame, and then to anger. And finally, to determination, because that was the type of woman that she was. Iris Sunfall. Tenebrist, demonologist, hand of Lady Sylvanas. Not some mewling child. Her knuckles were bleeding. She grit her teeth and ground away. It might take her decades to scrape her shackles into fine powder. But blood elves were blessed with a long life and long memories. And therefore, long grudges. She hated Stormwind more than anything in the world. The city had taken her eyes away and strangled the power out of her, leaving her a wingless bird to stumble about a cage in agony, and all for the entertainment of some hideously human audience. Sweat clung hair to her scorched eyes. She imagined them crowding around her cell, thousands of them, quietly watching, smiling. She imagined her fingers around their necks. Annhylde had been watching her squirm for hours. The Val'kyr smiled. *** Helena never said goodbye to Valentine. She had seen him before her departure, or rather, he had found her, but there were no goodbyes. He had wanted to kiss her. But her children were there, so she pressed her hand against Val's chest and said no. She remembered the pain in his eyes as she walked down the harbor, gripping William's hand. Valentine was a good boy. He had been good to her during her months in Stormwind, but he knew just as well that it had to end. Everything did. She had come to learn this and, in time, so would he, and then he would be a better man for it. What more, after all, was she than a provider of medicine? Some bitter, some sweet, always toward a greater good. Sometimes the most beautiful things live and die in absolute secrecy. Helena's fingers clutched the railing of the Baradin's Bounty as it drifted across the black water, Stormwind's glimmering walls retreating away from her into the horizon, shrinking behind the slopes of moonlit cliffs until all that remained was a single thread of smoke, rising from the Old Town, curling like incense into the night air. Clouds of white birds were gathering around a crescent moon. She watched their reflections in an obsidian sea, an abyss that surrounded her, above and below. And then, Helena Stover, Argent Priestess, mother of two, was alone. Profoundly alone. Something inside her unlocked. A floodgate, a door, a window somewhere. A single loose brick. The space of one grain of millet, one mote of pestilence. She felt cold. *** Contrary to Donna's beliefs, William did care about her. He just had a peculiarly evil way of showing that he cared. For example, he had taken it upon himself to entertain his feverish sister with a card game. It wasn't as if being locked in a stuffy cabin on a fishing boat provided for much entertainment. Donna was understandably skeptical but, in the end, she had Betsy in her arms. "You're gonna love this. I learned it from a cat." He began arranging cards on the bed. Donna watched. "Pick a card, Donna." He grinned. "Any card." ***